LITTLE ROCK, ARK. — Dawna Natzke planned to have her family over for Christmas to open gifts and feast on steaks.

Yet, five days after the holiday, the presents in Natzke's home remain untouched.

Her family and friends haven't been able to embrace the holidays since Natzke, a police dispatcher in a gated community in central Arkansas, vanished last week. Instead, they fear that the mother of three is dead after someone found her station wagon burned in a forest not far from her Hot Springs Village home.

"It's been too long and no word, no clues, no anything," Natzke's mother, Doris Smith, told The Associated Press.